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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

California high school kids suspended for wearing white T-shirts. You won’t believe why.
Soquel, California is a lovely little town just up the road from IHateTheMedia.com’s intergalactic headquarters. It sits along the Pacific Ocean very near the lunatic liberal bastion of Santa Cruz.

A group of students at Soquel High School has been suspended for wearing a white T-shirts on Senior Picture Day.

The group of friends say they wore the shirts so they’d stand out in the group photos, so it would be easier to look back years from now and say, “There’s my buddy Larry. And there’s Big Mike. And there’s me.”

The school decided that the white T-shirts were a sign of something else, something far more nefarious. In the minds of those in the administration at Soquel High School, a white T-shirt is now sign of … wait for it … white supremists.

Sigh.

This must be the most diverse group of white supremists ever assembled. It includes an Asian kid who wonders how he could possibly be a white supremacist.

Offshoring has Destroyed the US EconomyNobel Economist Michael Spence Says Globalism Is Costly For Americans

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

For a decade I have warned that US corporations, pressed by Wall Street and large retailers such as Wal-Mart, to move offshore their production for US consumer markets, were simultaneously moving offshore US GDP, US tax base, US consumer income, and irreplaceable career opportunities for American citizens.

Among the serious consequences of offshoring are the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the US an “opportunity society,” an extraordinary worsening of the income distribution, and large trade and federal budget deficits that cannot be closed by normal means. These deficits now threaten the US dollar’s role as world reserve currency.

I was not alone in making these warnings. Dr. Herman Daly, a former World Bank economist and professor at the University of Maryland, Dr. Charles McMillion, a Washington, DC, economic consultant, and Dr. Ralph Gomory, a distinguished mathematician and the world’s best trade theorist, understand that it is strictly impossible for an economy to be moved offshore and for the country with the offshored economy to remain prosperous.

Even before this handful of economists capable of independent thought saw the ruinous implications of offshoring, two billionaires first recognized the danger and issued warnings, to no avail. One of the billionaires was Roger Milliken, the late South Carolina textile magnate, who spent his time on Capital Hill, not on yachts with Playboy centerfolds, trying to make our representatives aware that we were losing our economy. The other billionaire was the late Sir James Goldsmith, who made his fortune by correcting the mistakes of America’s incompetent corporate CEOs by taking over their companies and putting them to better use. Sir James spent his last years warning of the perils both of globalism and of merging the sovereignties of European countries and the UK into the EU.

Sir James book, The Trap, was published as long ago as 1993. His book, The Response, in which he replied to the “free trade” ideologues in the financial press and academia who denigrated his warning, was published in 1995. [ For readers who wish to hear a speech given by Sir James to the US Senate in 1994 warning of the perils of globalism, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maouTP8vTO0 Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI&feature=related ]

Sir James called it correct, as did Roger Milliken. They predicted that the working and middle classes in the US and Europe would be ruined by the greed of Wall Street and corporations, who would boost corporate earnings by replacing their domestic work forces with foreign labor, which could be paid a fraction of labor’s productivity as a result of the foreign country’s low living standard and large excess supply of labor. Anytime there is an excess supply of labor, or the ability of corporations to pay labor less than its productivity, the corporations bank the difference, Share prices rise, and Wall Street and shareholders are happy.

All of this was over the heads of “free trade” ideologues, who threw accusations such as “protectionist” at Sir James, Roger Milliken, Herman Daly, Ralph Gomory, Charles McMillion, and myself. These “free trade” ideologues are economically incompetent. They do not know that the justification for free trade is based on the principle of comparative advantage, which means that a country specializes in those economic activities in which it performs best and trades for those goods that other countries do best. Instead, the ideologues think that free trade means the freedom of capital to seek absolute advantage abroad in lowest factor cost. In other words, the free trade incompetents have never read David Ricardo, who formalized the case for free trade.

Other economists, especially those high profile ones in high profile academic institutions, were bought and paid for. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28189.htm In exchange for grants from offshoring corporations these hirelings invented “the New Economy,” in which everyone would prosper as a result of getting rid of “dirty fingernail jobs.” The New Economy wouldn’t make anything, but it would lead the world in innovation and in financing what others did make. The “new economists” were not sufficiently bright to realize that if a country didn’t make anything, it couldn’t innovate.

Let’s go now to Michael Spence and Sandile Hlatshwayo, who have provided an honest report for which we should give thanks. Professor Spence could have made many millions using the prestige of his Nobel Prize to lie for the Establishment, but he chose to tell the truth.

Here is what Spence and Hlatshwayo report:

“This paper examines the evolving structure of the American economy, specifically, the trends in employment, value added, and value added per employee from 1990 to 2008. These trends are closely connected with complementary trends in the size and structure of the global economy, particularly in the major emerging economies. Employing historical time series data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. industries are separated into internationally tradable and non-tradable components, allowing for employment and value-added trends at both the industry and the aggregate level to be examined. Value added grew across the economy, but almost all of the incremental employment increase of 27.3 million jobs was on the non-tradable side. On the non-tradable side, government and health care are the largest employers and provided the largest increments (an additional 10.4 million jobs) over the past two decades. There are obvious questions about whether those trends can continue; without fast job creation in the non-tradable sector, the United States would already have faced a major employment challenge.

“The trends in value added per employee are consistent with the adverse movements in the distri- bution of U.S. income over the past twenty years, particularly the subdued income growth in the middle of the income range. The tradable side of the economy is shifting up the value-added chain with lower and middle components of these chains moving abroad, especially to the rapidly growing emerging markets. The latter themselves are moving rapidly up the value-added chains, and higher-paying jobs may therefore leave the United States, following the migration pattern of lower-paying ones. The evolution of the U.S. economy supports the notion of there being a long-term structural challenge with respect to the quantity and quality of employment opportunities in the United States. A related set of challenges concerns the income distribution; almost all incremental employment has occurred in the non-tradable sector, which has experienced much slower growth in value added per employee. Because that number is highly correlated with income, it goes a long way to explain the stagnation of wages across large segments of the workforce.”

What is Spence telling us? Spence is careful not to say that globalism is the intentional result of enhancing capital’s profits at the expense of labor’s wages, but he does acknowledge that that is its effect and that globalism or jobs offshoring has the costs that Daly, Gomory, McMillion, Milliken, Goldsmith, and I have pointed out. Spence uses the same data that we have provided that proves that during the era of globalism the US economy has created new jobs only in nontradable services that cannot be offshored or be produced in locations distant from their market. For example, the services of barbers, waitresses, bar tenders, and hospital workers, unlike those of software engineers, cannot be exported. They can only be sold locally in the location where they are provided.

Tradeable jobs are jobs that produce goods and services that can be exported and thus can be produced in locations distant from their market. Tradeable jobs result in higher value-added and, thereby, higher pay than most non-tradable jobs.

When a country’s tradeable goods and services are converted by offshoring into its imports, it is thrown back on low productivity domestic service jobs for its employment. These domestic service jobs, except for dentists, lawyers, teachers, and medical doctors, do not require a university education. Yet, America has thousands of universities and colleges, and the government endlessly repeats the mantra that “education is the answer.”

But with engineering, design, and research jobs offshored, and with many of the jobs that remain within the US filled by foreigners on HB-1 and L-1 visas, we now have the phenomenon of American university and college graduates, heavily indebted with student loans, jobless, and living with their parents, who support them.

Spence also acknowledges that the change in the structure of American employment from higher productivity to lower productivity jobs is the reason both for the stagnation in US consumer income and for the rising inequality of income. Sending middle class jobs abroad raised the earnings of capital. Spence understands that the lack of growth in consumer income has resulted in a shortfall in domestic demand, resulting in high unemployment. He could have added that jobs offshoring also gave us the Federal Reserve’s policy of pumping up consumer debt as a substitute for the missing growth in consumer income. There is an obvious limit to the ability to maintain the growth of consumer demand via the growth of indebtedness.

The offshored economy is the “New Economy,” which the “free trade” hirelings of Wall Street and the global corporations invented in order to pay, with grants from the offshoring corporations, for their summer homes in the Hamptons.

As a graduate student in economics, I was fortunate to study with a number of professors who had or were subsequently awarded Nobel Prizes. Among these creative people there are two economists whom I did not study under, but whose work I have read, and whose work is of great importance to our economic prospects. The two most important economists of our time, who, without any doubt, deserve the Nobel Prize are Ralph Gomory and Herman Daly.

A Russian Black Sea Fleet task force led by a submarine is taking part in NATO naval drills off the coast of Spain, the Russian Defense Ministry said, the first time a Russian submarine has participated in any NATO exercise..

Bold Monarch is the world's largest submarine rescue exercise held every three years. This year's exercise, conducted on May 30-June 10 near the Spanish port of Cartagena, involves submarines, ships and aircraft from both NATO and non-NATO countries, including Russia.

Throughout history, the majority of people have been conditioned to love being deceived and to idolize corrupt degenerates. People are deceived when they choose to believe facts or stories given to them by “experts” and “authorities,” no matter how false and absurd.

An old example is the story of Barabbas, in which the people were offered a choice of who should be freed from prison: Jesus who preached love and exposed the corrupt hypocrisy of the ruling class, or Barabbas; a man arrested for insurrection and murder (it should be noted that Barabbas may have had public support if his crimes were against the occupying Romans). Not only did the people choose to free Barabbas, but they demanded Jesus be crucified for challenging the authority and power of the religious leaders.

A modern example of the majority choosing lies over truth and worshiping corrupt degenerate criminals are the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Despite the nano-thermite, and no matter how ridiculous the official story of Al-Qaeda is, the majority still believe that 19 hijackers from a cave crashed jets into two buildings at the World Trade Center, causing three (3) sky-scrapers including Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, to implode at free-fall speed through the path of greatest resistance into a pyroclastic debris cloud. How did a Boeing 757 with a wingspan of 125 ft. fit into a 20-foot pre-collapse hole at the Pentagon; and why is there not one photo of the plane hitting the Pentagon? I won’t go into more details as the Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth and others have covered the 9/11 false-flag, with stand-down orders given...

WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk
Radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. The agency now lists mobile phone use in the same "carcinogenic hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform.

Before its announcement Tuesday, WHO had assured consumers that no adverse health effects had been established.

A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, made the decision after reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety. The team found enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."

What that means is they found some evidence of increase in glioma and acoustic neuroma brain cancer for mobile phone users, but have not been able to draw conclusions for other types of cancers

"The biggest problem we have is that we know most environmental factors take several decades of exposure before we really see the consequences," said Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Is your cell phone safe?
Dr. Gupta explores cell phone safety
Cell phone use 'possibly carcinogenic'
RELATED TOPICS

Smartphones
Consumer Electronics
Cancer

The type of radiation coming out of a cell phone is called non-ionizing. It is not like an X-ray, but more like a very low-powered microwave oven.

"What microwave radiation does in most simplistic terms is similar to what happens to food in microwaves, essentially cooking the brain," Black said. "So in addition to leading to a development of cancer and tumors, there could be a whole host of other effects like cognitive memory function, since the memory temporal lobes are where we hold our cell phones."

Wireless industry responded to Tuesday's announcement saying it "does not mean cell phones cause cancer." CTIA-The Wireless Association added that WHO researchers "did not conduct any new research, but rather reviewed published studies."

The European Environmental Agency has pushed for more studies, saying cell phones could be as big a public health risk as smoking, asbestos and leaded gasoline. The head of a prominent cancer-research institute at the University of Pittsburgh sent a memo to all employees urging them to limit cell phone use because of a possible risk of cancer.

"When you look at cancer development -- particularly brain cancer -- it takes a long time to develop. I think it is a good idea to give the public some sort of warning that long-term exposure to radiation from your cell phone could possibly cause cancer," said Dr. Henry Lai, research professor in bioengineering at University of Washington who has studied radiation for more than 30 years.

Results from the largest international study on cell phones and cancer was released in 2010. It showed participants in the study who used a cell phone for 10 years or more had doubled the rate of brain glioma, a type of tumor. To date, there have been no long-term studies on the effects of cell phone usage among children.

"Children's skulls and scalps are thinner. So the radiation can penetrate deeper into the brain of children and young adults. Their cells are at a dividing faster rate, so the impact of radiation can be much larger." said Black of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

In February, a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, revealed radiation emitted after just 50 minutes on a mobile phone increases the activity in brain cells. The effects of brain activity being artificially stimulated are still unknown.

Neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta says Tuesday's announcement, "dealt a blow to those who have long said, 'There is no possible mechanism for cell phones to cause cancer.' By classifying cell phones as a possible carcinogen, they also seem to be tacitly admitting a mechanism could exist."

Manufacturers of many popular cell phones already warn consumers to keep their device away from their body.

Sports and energy drinks are heavily marketed to children and adolescents, but in most cases kids don’t need them – and some of these products contain substances that could be harmful to children.

In a new clinical report, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) outlines how these products are being misused, discusses their ingredients, and provides guidance to decrease or eliminate consumption by children and adolescents. The report, “Sports Drinks and Energy Drinks for Children and Adolescents: Are They Appropriate?” is published in the June 2011 issue of Pediatrics (published online May 30).

“There is a lot of confusion about sports drinks and energy drinks, and adolescents are often unaware of the differences in these products,” said Marcie Beth Schneider, MD, FAAP, a member of the AAP Committee on Nutrition and co-author of the report. “Some kids are drinking energy drinks – containing large amounts of caffeine – when their goal is simply to rehydrate after exercise. This means they are ingesting large amounts of caffeine and other stimulants, which can be dangerous.”

Sports drinks and energy drinks are different products, said Holly J. Benjamin, MD, FAAP, a member of the executive committee of the AAP Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness, and a co-author of the report. Sports drinks, which contain carbohydrates, minerals, electrolytes and flavoring, are intended to replace water and electrolytes lost through sweating during exercise.

Sports drinks can be helpful for young athletes engaged in prolonged, vigorous physical activities, but in most cases they are unnecessary on the sports field or the school lunchroom.

“For most children engaging in routine physical activity, plain water is best,” Dr. Benjamin said.

“Sports drinks contain extra calories that children don’t need, and could contribute to obesity and tooth decay. It’s better for children to drink water during and after exercise, and to have the recommended intake of juice and low-fat milk with meals. Sports drinks are not recommended as beverages to have with meals.”

Energy drinks contain substances not found in sports drinks that act as stimulants, such as caffeine, guarana and taurine. Caffeine – by far the most popular stimulant – has been linked to a number of harmful health effects in children, including effects on the developing neurologic and cardiovascular systems. Energy drinks are never appropriate for children or adolescents, said Dr. Schneider and Dr. Benjamin. In general, caffeine-containing beverages, including soda, should be avoided.

The report contains tables listing specific products available today and their contents.

“In many cases, it’s hard to tell how much caffeine is in a product by looking at the label,” Dr. Schneider said. “Some cans or bottles of energy drinks can have more than 500 mg of caffeine, which is the equivalent of 14 cans of soda.”

AAP recommendations include:•Pediatricians should highlight the difference between sports drinks and energy drinks with patients and their parents, and talk about the potential health risks.•Energy drinks pose potential health risks because of the stimulants they contain, and should never be consumed by children or adolescents.•Routine ingestion of carbohydrate-containing sports drinks by children and adolescents should be avoided or restricted, because they can increase the risk of overweight and obesity, as well as dental erosion.•Sports drinks have a limited function for pediatric athletes; they should be ingested when there is a need for rapid replenishment of carbohydrates and/or electrolytes in combination with water during prolonged, vigorous physical activity.•Water, not sports drinks, should be the principal source of hydration for children and adolescents.

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military.

In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks," said a military official.

Recent attacks on the Pentagon's own systems—as well as the sabotaging of Iran's nuclear program via the Stuxnet computer worm—have given new urgency to U.S. efforts to develop a more formalized approach to cyber attacks. A key moment occurred in 2008, when at least one U.S. military computer system was penetrated. This weekend Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor, acknowledged that it had been the victim of an infiltration, while playing down its impact.

The report will also spark a debate over a range of sensitive issues the Pentagon left unaddressed, including whether the U.S. can ever be certain about an attack's origin, and how to define when computer sabotage is serious enough to constitute an act of war. These questions have already been a topic of dispute within the military.

One idea gaining momentum at the Pentagon is the notion of "equivalence." If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a "use of force" consideration, which could merit retaliation...

Afghanistan withdrawal: no significant pull out, says senior British general

Days after the Prime Minister announced the first reduction in British troop numbers, Lt Gen James Bucknall said talk of an early exit risked sending mixed messages that could encourage the Taliban.

Nato troop numbers should remain unchanged for two more summer "fighting seasons", he said.

Lt Gen Bucknall warned that Helmand, where British troops are stationed, was likely to see some of the heaviest fighting in the coming months.

The comments come amid heated debate between generals and political leaders in London and Washington over how quickly Nato forces can leave Afghanistan.

Officers say the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan has increased the politicians' desire for major withdrawals before next year's US presidential election and the British election in 2015. Mr Cameron announced this month that Britain would pull out 450 troops by the end of this year, overruling defence chiefs who wanted a smaller cut.

Is Texas Gov. Rick Perry the Bilderberg group’s Republican candidate-in-waiting in the 2012 presidential race? The shadowy globalist group is scheduled to meet secretly behind locked doors over the weekend of June 9-12 in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and AFP will be on location to cover it.

It is not without precedent to tap state governors for broader vistas. Bill Clinton at one time was the obscure governor of Arkansas—a land with strong Rockefeller influence since the days of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller. As governor, Clinton attended his first Bilderberg meeting in 1991 and was elected president about a year later.

Like Clinton, Perry has attended a Bilderberg meeting. In June 2007 Perry attended the Bilderberg confab in Istanbul, Turkey, making the mandatory promise of secrecy and to follow orders. At the time, Perry was chastised in the newly aroused independent press.

Speculation that Perry is the Bilderberg group’s ace card was prompted by the current political climate, which can largely be gleaned from the fact that Perry is a longtime, unwavering supporter of the NAFTA Superhighway and related infrastructure projects. These pave the way for the Bilderberg-supported North American Union (NAU) proposal that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The word is that Bilderberg is concerned about the boring field of Republican presidential candidates. One of the current GOP candidates, former Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich, once told AFP, eyeball to eyeball, that he never had participated and never would participate in Bilderberg or Trilateral Commission meetings, although Gingrich is still a fervent globalist, nonetheless.

President Obama, as AFP has reported, is a tool of Bilderberg. He had been sought out at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Va., just before winning the 2008 Democratic nomination. While receiving his instructions from Bilderberg, the dutiful Obama appeared to be bobbing for apples.

But just owning the Democratic nominee won’t do, as Bilderberg likes to own both horses in a two horse race for the White House.

Bilderberg’s GOP favorite, such as he is, is starchy Mitt Romney, but the former Massachusetts governor keeps tripping over his mouth trying to explain his health reform positions. As governor, he imposed the kind of topdown mandatory healthcare reform that Bilderberg likes. As a presidential candidate, Romney is suddenly trying to explain how he opposes it. So, he is unlikely to be nominated. The rest of the field is also weak, but any nominee could be elected if the country remains in recession—something Bilderberg has engineered.

So enter Perry to “save the day” for internationalism.

In 2007, when confronted by the local press on his return from Turkey, Perry insisted that the Bilderberg boys do good work and Americans should be grateful.

But Perry appeared confused when asked about the Logan Act, which outlaws meetings of government officials with private citizens to make public policy unless they are held in public, not behind locked and guarded doors as is the case at the annual Bilderberg meetings.

Foes of the Logan Act argue that it passed in 1789, so it’s “out of date.” To this, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) responds that unless it’s repealed, it remains the law. And it has been amended and strengthened over the years, including in the 20th century.

Paul has called for a criminal investigation into Perry’s Bilderberg trip. “This information about him going over there and violating the Logan Act and getting involved . . . I’m just impressed that that’s in the ordinary media—I think that’s encouraging, too,” he said on a talk radio show, adding that Perry’s attendance was “a sign that he’s involved in the international conspiracy.”

Perry has repeatedly denied that he is running for president, but several campaigns have been put forth to draft the three term Texas governor. In addition, Perry keeps pushing himself as a Bilderberg wild card. At Republican events, he has described the type of nominee the GOP needs (like himself) without naming himself.

The Bilderberg backed NAU that he supports would erase the boundaries between Mexico, the United States and Canada. The plan is to expand the “union” throughout the Western Hemisphere, resulting in an “American Union,” similar to the European Union that is draining Europe dry of its former prosperity, with Switzerland— the location of the 2011 Bilderberg meeting—faring better because it’s neither an EU nor a NATO member.

His support of the Trans Texas Corridor within the state’s boundaries has been unflinching, since that is Texas’s part of the greater NAFTA Superhighway network to connect the NAU nations physically.

Bilderberg, true to form, wants the U.S. recession to continue throughout 2012 and for oil prices to remain high and increase further. This could make Obama a one-term president. But at this point it appears Bilderberg’s “other horse” is headed for the stable, to be groomed as their ace in the hole.

40 Signs The Chinese Economy Is Beating The Living Daylights Out Of The U.S. Economy

The following are 40 signs that the Chinese economy is beating the living daylights out of the U.S. economy....

#1 The Chinese economy has grown 7 times faster than the U.S. economy has over the past decade.

#2 According to the IMF, China will pass the United States and will become the largest economy in the world in 2016.

#3 According to one prominent economist, the Chinese economy already has roughly the same amount of purchasing power as the U.S. economy does.

#4 At the turn of this century the United States accounted for well over 20 percent of global GDP and China accounted for significantly less than 10 percent of global GDP. But since that time America's share of global GDP has been steadily declining and China's share has been steadily rising.

#5 Nobel economist Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040 if current trends continue.

#6 According to Stanford University economics professor Ed Lazear, if the U.S. economy and the Chinese economy continue to grow at current rates, the average Chinese citizen will be wealthier than the average American citizen in just 30 years.

#7 During 2010, we spent $365 billion on goods and services from China while they only spent $92 billion on goods and services from us.

#8 Since 2005, Americans have gobbled up Chinese products and services totaling $1.1 trillion, but the Chinese have only spent $272 billion on American goods and services.

#9 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the U.S. trade deficit with China is now 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#10 Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year. For the month of April 2011 alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 18.8 billion dollars.

#11 Since China entered the WTO in 2001, the U.S. trade deficit with China has grown by an average of 18% per year.

#12 According to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, between 2001 and 2008 the U.S. lost approximately 2.4 million jobs due to the growing trade deficit with China. Every single state in America experienced a net job loss due to our trade deficit with China during this time period.

#13 The United States had been the leading consumer of energy on the globe for about 100 years, but last summer China took over the number one spot.

#14 China produced 19.8 percent of all the goods consumed in the world last year. The United States only produced 19.4 percent.

#15 China now consumes 53 percent of the world's cement.

#16 Last year, China produced 11 times as much steel as the United States did.

#17 Since China joined the WTO, approximately 46,000 factories have been transferred from the United States to Asia.

#18 China now has the world’s fastest train and the world’s largest high-speed rail network.

#19 Is alternative energy the future? If so, the Chinese economy is positioned well. China is now the number one producer in the world of wind and solar power.

#20 Chinese solar panel production was about 50 times larger in 2010 than it was in 2005.

Is the Libyan war legal? Was Bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those "enhanced interrogation techniques" legal? These are all questions raised in recent weeks. Each seems to call out for debate, for answers. Or does it?

Now, you couldn’t call me a legal scholar. I’ve never set foot inside a law school, and in 66 years only made it onto a single jury (dismissed before trial when the civil suit was settled out of court). Still, I feel at least as capable as any constitutional law professor of answering such questions.

My answer is this: they are irrelevant. Think of them as twentieth-century questions that don't begin to come to grips with twenty-first century American realities. In fact, think of them, and the very idea of a nation based on the rule of law, as a reflection of nostalgia for, or sentimentality about, a long-lost republic. At least in terms of what used to be called "foreign policy," and more recently "national security," the United States is now a post-legal society. (And you could certainly include in this mix the too-big-to-jail financial and corporate elite.)

It’s easy enough to explain what I mean. if, in a country theoretically organized under the rule of law, wrongdoers are never brought to justice and nobody is held accountable for possibly serious crimes, then you don’t have to be a constitutional law professor to know that its citizens actually exist in a post-legal state. If so, "Is it legal?" is the wrong question to be asking, even if we have yet to discover the right one.

Pretzeled Definitions of Torture

Of course, when it came to a range of potential Bush-era crimes – the use of torture, the running of offshore "black sites," the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects to lands where they would be tortured, illegal domestic spying and wiretapping, and the launching of wars of aggression – it’s hardly news that no one of the slightest significance has ever been brought to justice. On taking office, President Obama offered a clear formula for dealing with this issue. He insisted that Americans should "look forward, not backward" and turn the page on the whole period, and then set his Justice Department to work on other matters. But honestly, did anyone anywhere ever doubt that no Bush-era official would be brought to trial here for such potential crimes?

Everyone knows that in the United States if you’re a robber caught breaking into someone’s house, you’ll be brought to trial, but if you’re caught breaking into someone else’s country, you’ll be free to take to the lecture circuit, write your memoirs, or become a university professor.

Of all the "debates" over legality in the Bush and Obama years, the torture debate has perhaps been the most interesting, and in some ways, the most realistic. After 9/11, the Bush administration quickly turned to a crew of hand-picked Justice Department lawyers to create the necessary rationale for what its officials most wanted to do – in their quaint phrase, "take the gloves off." And those lawyers responded with a set of pseudo-legalisms that put various methods of "information extraction" beyond the powers of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N.’s Convention Against Torture (signed by President Ronald Reagan and ratified by the Senate), and domestic anti-torture legislation, including the War Crimes Act of 1996 (passed by a Republican Congress).

In the process, they created infamously pretzled new definitions for acts previously accepted as torture. Among other things, they essentially left the definition of whether an act was torture or not to the torturer (that is, to what he believed he was doing at the time). In the process, acts that had historically been considered torture became "enhanced interrogation techniques." An example would be waterboarding, which had once been bluntly known as "the water torture" or "the water cure" and whose perpetrators had, in the past, been successfully prosecuted in American military and civil courts. Such techniques were signed off on after first reportedly being "demonstrated" in the White House to an array of top officials, including the vice-president, the national security adviser, the attorney general, and the secretary of state.

In the U.S. (and here was the realism of the debate that followed), the very issue of legality fell away almost instantly. Newspapers rapidly replaced the word "torture" – when applied to what American interrogators did – with the term "enhanced interrogation techniques," which was widely accepted as less controversial and more objective. At the same time, the issue of the legality of such techniques was superseded by a fierce national debate over their efficacy. It has lasted to this day and returned with a bang with the bin Laden killing.

Nothing better illustrates the nature of our post-legal society. Anti-torture laws were on the books in this country. If legality had truly mattered, it would have been beside the point whether torture was an effective way to produce "actionable intelligence" and so prepare the way for the killing of a bin Laden.

By analogy, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that robbing banks can be a successful and profitable way to make a living, but who would agree that a successful bank robber hadn’t committed an act as worthy of prosecution as an unsuccessful one caught on the spot? Efficacy wouldn’t matter in a society whose central value was the rule of law. In a post-legal society in which the ultimate value espoused is the safety and protection a national security state can offer you, it means the world.

As if to make the point, the Supreme Court recently offered a post-legal ruling for our moment: it declined to review a lower court ruling that blocked a case in which five men, who had experienced extraordinary rendition (a fancy globalized version of kidnapping) and been turned over to torturing regimes elsewhere by the CIA, tried to get their day in court. No such luck. The Obama administration claimed (as had the Bush administration before it) that simply bringing such a case to court would imperil national security (that is, state secrets) – and won. As Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the case, summed matters up, "To date, every victim of the Bush administration's torture regime has been denied his day in court."

To put it another way, every CIA torturer, all those involved in acts of rendition, and all the officials who okayed such acts, as well as the lawyers who put their stamp of approval on them, are free to continue their lives untouched. Recently, the Obama administration even went to court to "prevent a lawyer for a former CIA officer convicted in Italy in the kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric from privately sharing classified information about the case with a Federal District Court judge." (Yes, Virginia, elsewhere in the world a few Americans have been tried in absentia for Bush-era crimes.) In response, wrote Scott Shane of the New York Times, the judge "pronounced herself ‘literally speechless.’"

The realities of our moment are simple enough: other than abusers too low-level (see England, Lynndie and Graner, Charles) to matter to our national security state, no one in the CIA, and certainly no official of any sort, is going to be prosecuted for the possible crimes Americans committed in the Bush years in pursuit of the Global War on Terror.

"We need to be honest with the president, with the Congress, with the American people" about the consequences of cutting the defense budget, said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his valedictory policy address to the American Enterprise Institute.

"(A) smaller military, no matter how superb, will be able to go fewer places and do fewer things."

Gates seeks to ignite a debate the country seems reluctant to have. With a federal budget running out of balance by 10 percent of gross domestic product, what are we Americans willing to sacrifice? What are we willing to forego? What are we willing to cut?

The biggest budget items are Social Security, Medicare and defense. To Democrats, the first two are untouchables. To most Republicans, defense is off the table. Indeed, the likelihood is that any budget deal to which both parties agree will contain escape clauses to enable Congress to avoid the painful decisions and kick the can up the road.

Consider the situation the U.S. military faces.

The useful life of the planes, ships, missiles, guns and armor that date to the Ronald Reagan buildup of the 1980s is coming to an end, and the cost of replacement weapons is far greater. A fleet of 2,440 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, for example, will cost over $1 trillion.

Military health care costs have risen 150 percent in 10 years to $50 billion a year. The pay and benefits of today's forces, which are one-tenth the size of those we deployed in World War II, have seen comparable increases. These costs are eating deeply into the dollars for new weapons systems.

And while we no longer face a Soviet Union with nuclear and conventional forces equal to our own, U.S. commitments have not been reduced but augmented since the end of the Cold War. Six Warsaw Pact nations were brought into NATO, along with three republics of the old Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, the disarmament of Europe continues in the wake of the debt crisis. Of special concern are cuts by the Tory government of Great Britain, our most reliable ally for 70 years.

While the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have been shuttled in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, China has fought no wars – but grown its defense budget by double-digits annually for two decades.

She now possesses submarines, missiles and aircraft sufficient to challenge the United States in the Western Pacific and is clearly intent on forcing a U.S. strategic retreat from the region.

"The tough choices ahead," said Gates, are "about the kind of role the American people – accustomed to unquestioned military dominance for the past two decades – want their country to play in the world."

We face the necessity of choice, and perhaps the place to begin is for Americans to ask two questions.

First, what is so vital to our security we must defend it at the risk of war? Second, what Cold War commitments can we relinquish now that the Soviet Empire no longer exists and Russia no longer represents a global threat?

Once the Afghan War is over, certainly, a U.S. withdrawal from South and Central Asia would seem in order, as this is about as far from the United States as one can get.

The same would hold true of Korea. From 1950 to 1953, the United States, with a 330,000-man army, fought both North Korea and China. At issue was not only the fate of the peninsula, but the orientation of Japan in the Cold War.

Today, Seoul has twice the people and 40 times the economy of the North. Pyongyang has no Stalinist Russia or Maoist China backing it up in a war with the South. Can we not now withdraw our remaining 28,000 troops and restrict our commitment in any new war to air and naval support?

China today not only claims Taiwan, but the Senkaku Islands that Japan claims, and all of the islands in the South China Sea, which are also claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Is it our obligation to validate all of these claims against China? What is our vital interest in any of these disputes when every president since Richard Nixon has agreed that Taiwan is part of China? Cannot these countries buy from us the weapons to defend themselves?

Europe is as prosperous and more populous than the United States. And the Russian army is no longer in Germany, but 1,000 miles to the east, behind the Baltic republics, Belarus and Ukraine.

What is the necessity now for a U.S. troop presence in Europe?

Retrenchment is rarely attractive. But what is apparent today to almost all is that this country is now and has been for at least a decade living far beyond her means.

We borrow hundreds of billions annually from allies, to defend those allies. We borrow hundreds of billions annually from our children's future to maintain our present lifestyle. Our leaders have yet to show the toughness and maturity the new times demand.

They wouldn't have a financial reason to see internet control increased to stop critics of America's perpetual war policies now, would they?

Lockheed Martin's Hack Attack

Lockheed Martin has claimed, and the US Department of Defense has confirmed, that the megalithic defense contractor has suffered a "cyber incident."

Lockheed Martin is claimed to be a defense contractor American national security depends on. If this private corporation really is bestowed with such a grave responsibility and it was incompetent enough to put sensitive information and systems onto the public Internet, it should immediately have such responsibilities stripped away and perhaps undergo a vigorous investigation in regards to its criminal negligence in handling sensitive state secrets. At the very least, all contracts should be canceled and new contractors immediately found - ones capable of isolating sensitive information from the public Internet.

Instead, the war profiteering corporation and the extralegal, extraterritorial global corporate-financier steering committees it is a member of, are using the attack to add to the growing call to institute increasing control over the Internet. It is yet another suspicious incident that has corporate-funded pundits calling for increased "cyber security" and lending further justification for the completely unjustified existence of government agencies like the "Department of Homeland Security."

Our politicians then parrot verbatim the think-tanks and their corporate media talking points declaring that cyber security must take center stage – not the gross incompetence of corporations that have uncontested, undue access and influence over the American tax payers' money. The next step will be increased legislation giving the government and their corporate handlers more control over how the public uses the Internet - all based on and citing incidents like Lockheed Martin's recent cyber security breach.

Defying Common Sense

Even on a personal level, private, confidential information is safest when it is kept solely on a closed system, disconnected from the Internet. Any information put on the Internet must be assumed to be at potential risk and suitable contingencies must be put in place to deal with that information falling into the wrong hands. If that information must absolutely not fall into the wrong hands, it must then be entirely isolated from the Internet.

Scientists who worked on America's most sensitive defense projects historically would live and work sequestered at research facilities. They would not bring their briefcases full of national secrets to the local cafe, ride the city buses, nor talk about such information on public telephone networks. It is hard to believe that today, such corporations, many born from these WWII and Cold War defense projects, have suddenly forgotten the value of closed, controlled systems where secret research and sensitive projects are isolated from the public in all manners.The recent “hack” then is the result of at least two possibilities. First, it may be yet another attempt to scare the ignorant, uneducated masses into giving up more of their freedom and liberty for the sake of “security." "Security" being just a pretense for handing the corporate-financier elite yet another monopoly. If this is not an orchestrated event, it may just be utter incompetence. Either way, corporations like Lockheed Martin, the politicians whose leashes they hold, and the media machines that manage the public for them have outlived their usefulness. They have become as great a threat to our nation as any external enemy, either out of incompetence or unmitigated avarice.

It is time America replaced these aged, embedded parasites, obstacles of progress, sponges soaking up the brightest talent the nation has to offer and wringing it out into buckets of greedy, stagnant muck. Their missiles, warplanes, and ships are most certainly impressive, unrivaled even. But the price we have paid to procure this achievement is subservience to a despotic corporate-financier elite that has permeated and infected our government on all levels, as bad or worse than any invading foreign power could ever hope to achieve.

There may be the argument that no other corporation can do what Lockheed, or other parasitic war profiteering corporations like Boeing, Northrop, or Raytheon can do. Certainly this may be the case, but we must ask ourselves why our nation, with its vast resources, doesn't turn out annual graduate classes full of engineers, designers, rocket and nuclear scientists all capable of meeting local and national needs both civilian and military in nature. It is because the global elite have created a system so interdependent and monopolized on a global scale that only those that control it (them) can manage it and excel within it.

Americans like President Dwight Eisenhower or General Smedley Butler warned us long ago that the blurring line between corporatism and the American government was a grave threat to our nation's future. Decades later, with the nation under astronomical, mathematically inescapable debt, endless war, rotting infrastructure, and a sabotaged education system, is there any doubt that their warnings should have been heeded? Can we still heed them? We can and we must.

Throw off these corporations by boycotting and replacing them. For corporations like Lockheed Martin who we are told we “depend” on and cannot live without, their incompetence/conspiring as they bleed the American nation dry negates any benefit they supposedly grant us. In actuality, we cannot survive their continued existence.
Link:http://www.activistpost.com/2011/05/lockheed-martins-hack-attack.html

Enjoy your holiday everyone! Take time to remember those who gave their lives and/or service in defense of your liberty.

Those who fill the rows in Arlington National Cemetery and those who have been buried near their homes gave all they had to make sure you remained free. Many suffer from lifelong disabilities as a result of their service in honor of your freedom. To honor them and their sacrifices we, in the federal government, lovingly referred to as “Uncle Sam” have done everything we could to sustain the Constitution and your civil liberties and freedom.

Just as a reminder of how valuable these lives were and how great their sacrifice was, we at “Uncle Sam” would like to point you to our vast and unending efforts to honor that sacrifice:

Returning Iraq/Afghanistan soldiers are listed by Homeland Security and the Southern Poverty Law Center as “possible domestic terrorists”.
Those soldiers allowed to seek treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome are routinely given psychotropic drug cocktails to hasten their demise. (Oops!)
We have left many of them damaged and homeless in the streets while we denied them benefits and services.
In many instances we took life insurance policies (dead peasant policies) out on military personnel so that we could collect the insurance if they were killed in action, and there by deprived their families of those benefits.

But hey! We got a failing economy and needed to cut costs and collect on our investments. After all, if they can’t go fight for the oil cartels……Anyway…about that freedom thing…..Thanks to Homeland Security, the agency that is charged with protecting the government from you and your “freedoms” we at (“Uncle Sam”) have done everything we could to redefine those freedoms as the threat they are to our continued existence. Therefore:

You are no longer allowed to board a plane without one of our sexually perverted TSA (Total Sexual Assault) agents to either view your naked body in a scanner or to grope you unnecessarily, fondling your breasts and genitals …
For you ladies this is an especially invasive experience as these sexually perverted TSA agents will also attempt to invade your vagina…after all….no telling what you might have in there. (Isn’t freedom a great thing?)
Because we value your freedom and the sacrifices made by our precious military we are now attempting to install these TSA checkpoints in public buildings, hospitals, train stations, stadiums, libraries and anywhere else we can find a collection of otherwise unemployable riff-raff willing to stoop this low and where we look forward to groping you repeatedly just so you understand how free you are.
We are also in the process of devising a plan to identify and track your personal vehicle. That way, we know where you are and will tax you on your way with our new “per mile” tax to be assessed at the pump. (PS: we can also deny you access to the pump so you may not be going anywhere!)
Also, in the name of national security (one of our standard jingo’s that we love to use when we are really going to put the screws to that “freedom” thing), we now employ more than 40,000 in-house spies in 17 various spy agencies to do nothing but spy on you.
We are reading your email, snail mail and listening in on your phone conversations and invading your privacy at every opportunity and on every level for no other reason than… WE CAN! God bless those who died for “freedom”
We are assembling dossiers on each and every one of you and with the help of Southern Poverty Lie Center, we have many of you on targeted lists as “nativist extremists” (patriots) and view your patriotism as a threat to “Uncle Sam”.
We intend to use all of this data collection whether true or not, to prosecute you if we decide you are too much of a nuisance and if you continue to insist on your “rights”.
Just to make sure that you know what a threat you are to us, we are also sending 500 roving surveillance vans out into the country to x-ray as you walk down the street, or shop or just pass by us!

“Uncle Sam” wants you to know that we appreciate those who gave their life so that you could remain free, but it is time for you to accept that not only do we not care what their reasons were, they were fighting the wrong enemy. It is your “Uncle Sam” via Homeland security, the judicial system and that collection of elected thugs, liars, cheats and deceivers in congress who are doing the damage; having done what no terrorist could.

We just extended the anti-Constitutional Patriot Acts. For those not familiar with it, this Act destroyed the Constitution and your freedom.
It was not foreign terrorists who hated you for your freedoms…it was us at “Uncle Sam”!
The judiciary right up to SCOTUS is so corrupted we can’t help but laugh every time we see you look to these black-robed puppets thinking they are going to protect the Constitution, or you. Citizens v United was just ice cream on our fascist cake!
We at “Uncle Sam” hold secret meetings with foreign interests devising plans on how to deprive you of your sovereignty and force you into a New World Order.
We have sold your land to foreign governments and investors along with rights to your water and food. (Don’t worry! We are eating well and have plenty to drink)
We have passed so many laws, written so many unlawful executive orders, empowered so many privately owned federal agencies with law making powers and enforcement capabilities (you know what that means!) that you really don’t stand a chance against us.
Thanks to No Child Left Behind, your children are rendered so stupid they can barely think for themselves at all.
We are working hard to instill in their little minds that national sovereignty is a thing of the past and they should view themselves as “global citizens”…part of the hive!
While we arrest you for protesting, for objecting to our policies and demanding a return to the Constitutional Republic…..we have allowed a flood of millions of illegal immigrants to protest in your streets for their “rights”, unchallenged.
We have convinced you that Muslims want to kill you all and in this vein we allow an estimated 2 million to immigrate here each year.

Tomorrow on Memorial Day our current New World Order representative, President Obama will be beamed across your TV screens laying a huge wreath on the grave of the unknown soldier, just as every representative of the NWO has done before him. We’ll play “taps” too…that’s always good for jerking the heartstrings and god knows we love manipulating you.

While you are busy with this, we will be causing the deaths of not only our own military, but huge numbers of Afghani’s and Iraqi’s, along with Libyan’s, Pakistani’s, and whom ever else has assets we have decided we want. We will indiscriminately cause the deaths of men, women and children all around the world for no other reason than they refused to give up what belonged to them. We will do everything we can to convince you that these people are your enemies, or our all time favorite…..we are saving them from a brutal dictator (one of our buddies).

Tomorrow, be sure to celebrate the service and sacrifice of all our soldiers; they truly deserve it. In all of what we have caused and done they were the only honorable part of it. If you think we have lied to you and manipulated you, it is nothing compared to the lies we told them as we sent them off to fight wars of aggression for global cartels.

Memorial Day: The day “Uncle Sam” celebrates the coming New World Order.

Housing Apocalypse Tomorrow – 675,000 homes in foreclosure have made no payment in over two years. The never ending pipeline of troubled real estate.
There will be no sustainable housing recovery until the shadow inventory is cleared out. As of April with the latest data close to 6.4 million loans are delinquent or in foreclosure. This is a massive number of homes. What is downright disturbing of the 2.2 million homes in foreclosure you have 675,000 homes (31 percent of the pool) that have not made a payment in over two years. That is right, two full years. Apparently one-third of the bank’s strategy in dealing with foreclosures is simply to ignore missed payments. Glad it took them giant bailouts and four years to figure that one out. The housing crisis strategy is really a banking-centric one and that is why nothing has really been resolved since the crisis started. Banks are dictating the movement going forward so the idea of keeping prices inflated is simply one to protect banking interests. Since the market has very little desire for inflated real estate, banks just slip it under the rug for another day. Keep in mind that many Americans are seeing lower wages so lower home prices are actually good for their bottom line since it eats away less of their hard earned income. Plus, one-third own their home outright and another 30 percent rent. So this idea of keeping home prices high just for the sake of keeping them high is a ploy that comes out of the suspension of mark-to-market logic. Do people finally get that home prices have to fall to reflect local area incomes?

Is Your Sunscreen More Harmful Than Being in the Sun?by Martha Rosenberg

Most people have enough fear of skin cancer and photo-aging to give tanning salons wide berth, pun intended. But how safe are sunscreens themselves? Weeks after the New York Times exposed the caprice in assignment of sun protection factors (SPF) last year, Sen. Charles Schumer (D- New York) called on the FDA to investigate reports that an ingredient in most sunscreens — retinyl palmitate – actually causes cancer.

In one FDA study on animals, dismissed by a dermatologist consultant to sunscreen companies as “very premature to even cast doubt about the safety of this chemical,” retinyl palmitate accelerated tumors and lesions in the sun by 21 percent! (Similar studies on humans not animals would be “unethical” say scientists)

And there are other sunscreen doubts. Many people don’t apply the needed amount of sunscreen to protect themselves from UVA and UVB sunrays because the products are expensive (and no one wants to be a goo monster). But when they do, they still may not be safe since ingredients like oxybenzone — which is an endocrine-disrupter, as are most fragrances — and titanium dioxide are now thought to penetrate the skin and enter the bloodstream. THAT wasn’t in the brochure.

Once upon a time, before links between skin cancer and sun bathing were confirmed, people didn’t use sunscreen. They used baby oil and iodine to enhance the sun’s effect, literally sautéed themselves in the sun and using reflectors. (They were also smoking Tareytons or Kents which also wasn’t seen as self-destructive.) Having the best suntan in the room was like being the thinnest person in the room decades later: a badge of social status and sex appeal. Who knew that wrinkles would develop? Who believed they would live past 30?

Then the pendulum swung and the sun was as bad as, well, cigarettes. The era of sunscreens and long sleeves began and spray-on tans, often carrot-orange, were the rage, with Hollywood leading the way.

In fact the sun-avoidance pendulum swung so far, sunscreens began to be blamed for a possible national Vitamin D deficiency. The sun presumably couldn’t find bare skin on which to make Vitamin D anymore. Patients everywhere were told to seek sun instead of avoid it!

But last year, an Institute of Medicine report suggested that the deficiency fears might have been an over reaction. “The number of people with vitamin D deficiency in North America may be overestimated because many laboratories appear to be using cut-points that are much higher than the committee suggests is appropriate,” it said. Now, some are hoping the Institute of Medicine will address the sunscreen ingredients retinyl palmitate and oxybenzone.

Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management’s emerging markets group, said another financial crisis is inevitable because the causes of the previous one haven’t been resolved.

“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis,” Mobius said at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo today in response to a question about price swings. “Are the derivatives regulated? No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes.”

The total value of derivatives in the world exceeds total global gross domestic product by a factor of 10, said Mobius, who oversees more than $50 billion. With that volume of bets in different directions, volatility and equity market crises will occur, he said.

The global financial crisis three years ago was caused in part by the proliferation of derivative products tied to U.S. home loans that ceased performing, triggering hundreds of billions of dollars in writedowns and leading to the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008. The MSCI AC World Index of developed and emerging market stocks tumbled 46 percent between Lehman’s downfall and the market bottom on March 9, 2009.

One example: the underwear bomber, who was thwarted in late 2009. After that a bell weather homeland security stock OSI Systems [OSIS 39.11 0.04 (+0.1%) ] rocketed 30 percent within a month. “The stock went on a tear,” says Brian Ruttenbur, a research analyst at Morgan Keegan. Why? OSI makes X-ray and metal detectors used to scan people, baggage and cargo that it sells worldwide. During the past 12 months ending yesterday, the stock has popped from $25 to $40, driven by border and port growth.

Much has changed, since the government spent over $20 billion beefing up airport baggage screening nationwide with X-ray devices.

Airline security is a small business: about $1 billion. There’s 2,100 airport security lanes in the U.S., and 90 percent use X-ray scanners.

“The scanners are ten plus years old now,” says Ruttenbur and “going through an upgrade cycle.” Recently, the government has ordered another 500 scanners though.

Screening cargo going on aircraft and boats at ports is also spiking. Now, only a small percentage of all cargo is scanned. Security screening will grow ten percent to 15 percent annually in coming years, says Ruttenbur in a recent report. This driver will help OSI Systems pump out strong security earnings.

Ex CIA intelligence officer turned whistleblower and activist, Michael Scheuer, has launched a blistering attack on the political establishment, over its handing of the so called war on terror, asserting that the entire rationale behind it is based on outright lies and deception.

Mr Scheuer, who was speaking at the popular Hay Festival in the UK said that the politicians including the US President and the British Prime Minister have “not a clue about what’s going down in the western world”.

”We are being attacked in the west and we will continue to be attacked in the west as long as we are in Afghanistan, as long as we support the Israelis, as long as we protect the Saudi police state.” Scheuer said.

”They can’t cope with the fact that it’s nothing to do with the way we live. It doesn’t have anything to do with elections or democracy or liberty,” the counterterrorism expert added.

Scheuer, who headed up the CIA’s Osama Bin Laden tracking station between 1996 and 1999, asserted that ”The main recruitment sergeant for al Qaida is Barack Obama, ” adding that “his speech on May 19 was a declaration of cultural war on Islam.”

Last week, Scheuer penned a scathing commentary piece on the Obama middle east speech, describing the president as a “Neoconservative crusader” who has ” out-Bushed Bush and the Neoconservatives by a country mile, calling for U.S.-dictated (and enforced?) regime change in Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Iran, and Yemen.”

”We hear the President, we hear your Prime Minister, talking about thugs and gangsters. We are still in the starting blocks in this war.” Scheuer told the UK audience this past weekend.

When asked what Obama should do regarding the war on terror by a member of the audience, Scheuer replied ”I would ask him to tell the truth.”

”He, the first Mr Bush, then Mr Clinton and the second Mr Bush have assiduously lied to the American people for 20 years and as a result have made the relations in the United States between Muslims and other people much more difficult.” Scheuer said.

Scheuer explained that the so called “cultural war” against the West is a fabrication, created by Western elites in order to justify the West’s interventionist policy in the middle east and beyond.

”They have identified the motivation of our enemy as a war against liberty, as a war against gender equality,” Scheuer urged.

“There is almost no Muslim out there who is an insane character who is going to blow himself up because my daughters go to university. There is no discussion by bin Laden of this cultural war that is supposed to be waged against us.” he added.

”A president who was a statesman and a politician might say something like ‘I’m sorry we’ve been kinda lying to you for 30 years and why we are being attacked is until recently we were supporting fascism across the Middle East’.”

Scheuer added that the twisted assertion that a cultural war is being waged by muslims on the West is a complete Orwellian style reversal of reality.

”In the rhetoric of our enemies there is very little, if anything, about attacking us for how we live or how we think or how we act in our own country.”, Scheuer said.

”It is about intervention, it is about being in the Arab Peninsula and it has nothing to do with these cultural things. We are the ones that are arranging the cultural war against them.”

He added: ”The American relationship with Israel, in my mind, is a useless and unnecessary relationship. As long as we are playing a role we are the recruiting sergeant for the people that are going to kill us.”

“Look at where al-Qaeda is today compared with 9/11. Back then it was overwhelmingly in Afghanistan.” Scheuer said.

“Now they have part of Afghanistan, a big part of Pakistan and they are in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Africa and Palestine and moving into Lebanon. Their position is much better now than it was.”

The most likely place to be blown up by the shadow state terrorists is Chicago's Willis Tower, formerly Sears Tower. In 2004, the building was sold to a couple of investors from New York named Lloyd Goldman and Joseph Cayre who are associated with Larry Silverstein's investment group. Silverstein owned the lease on the World Trade Center complex, and made billions of dollars from the state managed destruction of World Trade 1, 2, and 7. He should be in prison for insurance fraud and covering up the 9/11 attacks. Actually, this snake should be hanged for treason!

It is not good news for the American people and the people of the Middle East that Silverstein's investment group is connected to Chicago's Willis Tower. Last year, Shepard Ambellas and Alex Thomas of the website 'The Intel Hub' wrote in an article called "What Do The Sears Tower; WTC, and Terror Drills Have In Common?":

Larry Silverstein, owner of Silverstein Properties, Inc. and the man who leased the World Trade Center Towers also happens to be the owner of the Sears Tower in Chicago. The complex was renamed the Willis Tower on July 16, 2009 and is insured by global insurance broker Willis Group Holdings. The insurer is very important in the grand scheme as can be seen with the WTC, whose insurance settlement amounted to a cool 4.68 billion dollars.

A company named Kroll is is the company tasked with providing security for the Sears Tower. After 9/11, Kroll purchased Convair, the very company that was responsible for recovering data from WTC hard drives. Kroll also managed the bunker in the WTC and is known to have had a hand in the London 7/7 bombings.

Radio host Alex Jones, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, and others have also said that a future false flag attack may take place in Chicago. The current mayor of Chicago is the former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Back in 2008, Emanuel said:

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.

Emanuel's ideas about the government's role in a crisis reveals an authoritarian mindset. Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" is a good examination of how leaders use crises, whether real or manufactured, to advance unpopular agendas and policies that undermine democratic governance and civil liberties. Government leaders that use shock techniques like false flag terrorist attacks to induce a population to change their behavior and beliefs are not interested in defending the people but taking control over society.

Preparing The Psychology of The People And The Bureaucracy

Since last year a number of emergency drills and exercises have taken place in and around the city of Chicago. To find out more about these drills and exercises, here are some articles you should read:

June 2010 - Emergency drills may close Chicago-area roads
June 2010 - Armageddon Simulated in Chicago
May 2011 - Third tallest building in Chicago enhances security, conducts fire evacuation drills

On June 10, 2011, Chicago's Northwest Community Hospital and the U.S. Army Reserve will perform an emergency exercise called "Red Dragon" to prepare for any future event involving mass death.

The publicly stated purpose for the drills are reasonable and normal. All responsible governments should take precautions to prepare citizens for an emergency situation like a flu pandemic or environmental disaster. But the U.S. shadow government is not responsible or trustworthy. The power-mad Emanuel is not a level-headed person that you want leading your city during a time of great sorrow and loss. Emanuel, like Rudy Giuliani, comes from the school of thought that says freedom is bad and authority is good. Tyrants love a crisis because in a state of crisis the people are confused, fearful, anxious, and willing to be led by a strong and powerful leader. A national crisis makes the people rally around the leader and gives the government increased authority to control society.

In July of last year, a former Clinton official said that a new terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 would boost President Obama's popularity and give his administration greater credibility. The remarks were made in anticipation of the mid-term elections, but they are still applicable today. The 2012 presidential election is around the corner and a new false flag attack in Obama's former nesting grounds would clear the path for victory.

Many in the alternative media have wondered if a false flag nuke attack within America is a real possibility. Would they do it? Who would it be? What cities would be targeted?

Recently, The New York Times reported that the United States is running out of a rare gas that is used to detect smuggled nuclear materials.

The reason given is that one arm of the Energy Department is selling the gas much quicker than the other is able to accumulate it.

While this could possibly be a legitimate reason, it seems highly suspicious that a government that is installing a police state nationwide to supposedly save us from terrorists would be unable to obtain the gas needed to detect smuggled nuclear weapons.

Wouldn’t a nuclear attack on America be the MOST important threat to combat?

Unfortunately there is a long history of suspicious nuclear activity in the United States, with cover story after cover story being spread throughout the corporate controlled media.

At this junction in history it seems prudent to lay out some of the more ludicrous stories that have been planted into the minds of the American people.

Laying The Groundwork

One of the more recent nuclear cover stories was released in late March. This story was just that, a complete and utter fabrication of what Al Qaeda can actually do.

25 letters that claim nuclear bombs are hidden throughout the United States were supposedly sent to multiple investigators and citizens in the Chicago area.

“The idea that Al Qaeda could place over a hundred nuclear weapons into government buildings throughout the United States is 100% impossible. Cave dwelling ninjas do not have the ability to either steal or create nuclear weapons, fly them over to America, and somehow plant them in government buildings.”

Last year Obama labeled a nuclear attack on America as the biggest single threat facing our nation yet we are unable to obtain the gas used to detected them?

Calling terrorists with nuclear weapons “the single biggest threat to U.S. security,” Obama said that the “central focus for this summit is getting the international community on the path in which we are locking down that nuclear material in a very specific time frame with a specific work plan,” Politico reported in 2010.

PhotobucketIn late July 2010, The National Research Council released a report titled, Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk.

The report outlined the fact that the United States is no longer able to track nukes threatening our shores!

Gordon Duff, writing for Veterans Today, speculated that this was a cover that could be used in the event of a false flag nuclear attack:

“A powerful group within the United States, one with influence over the press and the ability to derail an investigation as was done with 9/11, has been “tasked” with laying the groundwork for a terrorist attack on America, one using nuclear material.”

In the same article Gordon wrote about a somewhat unknown raid that took place in Indiana that he believes was related to smuggled nuclear weapons.

“Another piece of the puzzle involved a federal task force, Defense, Energy, FBI, descending on a warehouse in Greenfield, Indiana under the guise of a “records search.” This “Waco style” assault on a facility storing furniture for college dorm rooms was much more than it seemed. No case, criminal or civil, provided any underlying reason for the search.”

In 2002, World Net Daily reported on a book by an FBI consult that claimed that Osama Bin Laden had bought 20 suitcase nukes from KGB agents in 1998!

A new book by an FBI consultant on international terrorism says Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network purchased 20 suitcase nuclear weapons from former KGB agents in 1998 for $30 million.

The book,“Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror,” by Paul L. Williams, also says this deal was one of at least three in the last decade in which al-Qaida purchased small nuclear weapons or weapons-grade nuclear uranium.

Obviously this book was one of the first attempts to implant the possibility of Al Qaeda nuking the U.S. into the minds of the American people.

And then there is the now infamous 2007 Minot Air Force Base fiasco which involved nuclear weapons that were apparently missing for up to 36 hours.

“According to a wide range of reports, several nuclear bombs were “lost” for 36 hours after taking off August 29/30, 2007 on a “cross-country journey” across the U.S., from U.S.A.F Base Minot in North Dakota to U.S.A.F. Base Barksdale in Louisiana.

Reportedly, in total there were six W80-1 nuclear warheads armed on AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles (ACMs) that were “lost.” The story was first reported by the Military Times, after military servicemen leaked the story,” reported Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya.
Drills

Hundreds of large scale simulated nuclear drills have taken place in America and abroad during the last ten years.

One of the more ominous drills, TopOff 4, took place in Portland Oregon. The exercise simulated a large scale dirty bomb attack in the heart of downtown Portland.

The Oregon fact sheet on the exercise read like a Hollywood movie.

Remember we have lost most of our freedom due to the threat of terrorism yet we are supposed to believe that cave dwelling terrorists can outmaneuver multiple western intelligence agencies.

The T4 full-scale exercise is based on National Planning Scenario 11 (NPS-11). Terrorists have planned attacks in Oregon, Arizona, and the U.S. Territory of Guam. They have brought radioactive material into the United States.

The first of three coordinated attacks occurs in Guam, with the detonation of a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD), or “dirty bomb,” causing casualties and widespread contamination in a populous area. Within hours, similar attacks occur in Portland and Phoenix.

Interestingly enough, the drill took place at the same time as Vigilant Shield, a massive operation which simulated detonation of three radiological dispersal devices within the USNORTHCOM and U.S. Pacific Command areas of responsibility.

A quick search of the internet will reveal hundreds of similar drills in numerous different cities all with the same mind set. A mind set that is based off the false premise that terrorists can obtain nuclear material without the help of major governments.

Predictive Programming

The corporate controlled media and Hollywood have played a huge part in implementing a possible terrorist nuclear attack into the minds of people worldwide.

This idea is not only an American fear mongering operation.

Operation Blackjack, a set of slide show comics that depicted nuclear bombs detonating in major cities throughout the world, was mysteriously released in 2009 by The London Telegraph.

The slide shows had numerous embed codes and symbolism that to some indicated it was a very real operation that would happen on June 22nd 2009 or 2010.

Obviously those dates have come and gone but the IDEA that this could happen was cemented into the minds of the hundreds of thousands who read the comic like slide shows.

Interestingly enough, Jericho, a popular TV show in America, depicted a very similar scenario as Operation Blackjack.

The nuclear attacks in Jericho were actually carried out by rogue elements of our government who immediately instituted a North American Union, martial law, FEMA Camps, and private military death squads.

Doctor Who, a popular family show in Britain ran an episode that is a clear cut case of predictive programming. Nuclear attack, martial law, and labor camps!

While the sheer amount of predictive programming in regards to nuclear attacks makes it impossible to list them all, these three paint a clear picture of the mind control that we the people have experienced.
Questions Remain

It is clear that the groundwork and cover for a nuclear false flag in a major American or European city has been slowly put into place.

Many questions remain. Will the numerous hardworking, patriotic Americans in the government and military stop such a horrific act from happening?

Will the powers that be realize that the blame for such an attack would be pointed directly at them?

Will a different, more feasible, false flag be used instead?

These are questions that must be answered. We the people must let it be known that we will no longer stand for any form of false flag terrorism.

Take note America, as we continue to lose our freedoms in the name of security, we have become more vulnerable then ever to a large scale false flag on par or more extreme than 9/11.

So I am a blogger now.

This is my entry into the world of blogging. Don't know if anyone will ever see it or care, but here it goes. I intend it be a humorous, music, sports and current issues flavored site with postings of links to my favorite videos, info about my favorite bands, stuff I find funny and things I find newsworthy. It might become political at times. I just can't help myself. I will also use this as a forum to put things out there for information and education sake. I like to expose people to alternative ways of viewing events both past and present. I never believe everything I read and don't claim to have all the answers despite what many of you who know me believe. Hence the title of my blog. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to pass on any comments.

Disclaimer:

Many of the articles I post here are taken from some of my favorite alternative news sites and blogs. I do my best to post the link to the the source of the original article as well as the author's name if it is provided. If someone notices any omission on my part or feels that they would prefer that I not post their articles here, please contact me. I try to post the work of others in bold and italics. My comments or any work that is original to me, is presented in regular type format. My intention is to pass on information I find interesting or important to others for informational and/or educational value. Again, if someone wishes that I not use their work, please contact me. I will gladly remove it and refrain from posting it in the future.